Readers of KB Journal likely know Richard McKeon mainly through his essays on rhetoric and his relationship to Kenneth Burke. But McKeon was first and foremost a philosopher who came to rhetoric in mid-career, so that his work is a philosophical path to and defense of rhetoric. This path, moreover, precisely because of its philosophical depth,…[Read more]

Conceived humanistically, education is the study of what it means to be human. For Burke, humans are “symbol-using animals” or “bodies that learn language.” Burke understands humans both biologically, as part of the earth’s ecosystem, and linguistically, as a distinctive way to inhabit the earth. This combination points toward the day when science…[Read more]

Burke’s pentad and McKeon’s quartet both generate philosophical orientations. McKeon’s quartet also distinguishes philosophical orientations characteristic of different historical periods, including the twentieth century’s antifoundationalist “linguistic turn.” This historical dimension provides the basis for a McKeonist defense of Burke’s fou…[Read more]